


Broken Reunions

by inspiration_assaulted



Series: Fractured Lives [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M, Season/Series 01
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-04
Updated: 2013-11-06
Packaged: 2017-12-31 12:50:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 6,736
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1031882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inspiration_assaulted/pseuds/inspiration_assaulted
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I love you, Johnny-boy."</p><p>After John returns from Afghanistan, Jim goes underground. John must forget him, but how can he when he lives with Sherlock Holmes?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

If anyone had watched the children playing in a park outside London on a spring day long ago, they would have seen the beginning of something very special. That day, two young boys, both blonde, both in their first year of primary school, both friends since birth, were playing a game of Army.

They stalked along the tree line in their childish imitation of stealth tactics. All at once, they were ambushed by invisible-yet-fearsome enemies. They fought bravely back-to-back, protecting each other, when the taller boy was injured by an unseen foe.

“Johnny, I’m down, I’m hit!” he cried, falling to ground and grabbing his arm.

“It’s ok, Baz, I’ll fix you!” the smaller boy, Johnny, replied. He mimed wrapping a bandage around the ‘injured’ boy’s arm.

Miraculously healed, both boys returned to battle, routing their imaginary adversaries before collapsing to the ground in giggles.

This was not an unusual occurrence. The boys often played Army. What made this day so special was the presence of another boy. He was a recent immigrant from Ireland with his mother, the same age as the two would-be soldiers. He had dark hair, and his dark eyes watched the boys curiously. He had never had a friend before, someone his own age he could play make-believe and giggle with. He wanted to be friends with these two light-haired, light-hearted boys.

Johnny and Baz were still giggling when the dark-haired boy approached them.

“Hi,” he said nervously. “Can I play with you?”

“Sure!” Johnny said, never one to refuse a new friend. “I’m John Watson, but you can call me Johnny. This is Sebastian Moran. Everyone calls him Baz. What’s your name?”

“I’m James Moriarty. You can call me Jimmy. My mum and I just moved here.”

“Cool,” Baz said, green eyes wide with curiousity, “me and Johnny live around here too. Where did you move from?”

“Ireland.”

The boys, now a trio, spent the rest of the afternoon talking and laughing and playing Army. They discovered Jimmy wasn’t a very good fighter, but he made really good plans. Their little brigade now included a front-line soldier, a medic, and a strategist. The imaginary enemies would never defeat them again.

That spring day cemented a life-long friendship with the three. They would always be loyal to each other first, Queen and Country second, anyone else third.

* * *

 

“Joooohhnnnyyyy!!! Let’s go out and celebrate!”

“Baz, I can’t! _Some_ of us aren’t done with our tests yet! You go ahead, I still have to study.”

“ _Joooooohhhhnnnnnyyyyyy!!_ C’mon!”

“Seriously, Baz! These tests are important to me. You know, that whole medical school thing? That whole RAMC thing? I can’t ruin this with a hangover!”

“Jimmy, tell your boyfriend to quit being a prat and go out with us!”

“Baz, let him be. I’m not going either. You know you’re the only one done with his tests. We’ll go out and get massively pissed tomorrow night.”

“Fine! You’re both prats!”

* * *

 

“I’m gonna miss you, Johnny-boy.”

“That’s Lieutenant Johnny-boy to you, civilian. And don’t get sappy on me, Jim, it won’t be that long.”

“Nine months is a long time! A human baby is formed in nine months!”

“I know that, Jimmy. Medical school, remember?”

“I just… promise you’ll come back to me.”

“Nothing’s gonna happen to me, not with Baz as my captain. Besides, they’ll have me locked away in the hospital on base the whole time, safe and sound.”

“Please, John, promise me.”

“I, John Hamish Watson, promise to always, _always_ , return to you, James Richard Moriarty, my boyfriend, no matter how far away I go or what stands in my way.”

“Thank you. I love you, Johnny-boy.”

And I love you, Jim-boy. Now give me a kiss and let me get on the plane.”

* * *

 

“ _And I’ll be hooome for Christmaaass…”_

“Fucking quit singing, Johnny!”

_“If only in… my dreeeeaams!”_

“Jesus, you sound awful! I told you not to drink so much!”

“Baaaazzz, I wanna call Jimmy.”

“Hell no, John. I’m not letting you talk to him like this.”

“Then you call Jimmy! ‘N’ tell ‘im I said ‘Happy Chris’mas!’”

“I’m not calling him, John.”

“But whyyyy??”

“It’s fucking three in the morning back home! If I call Jim at three in the fucking morning the poor bastard’s gonna think you’re dead or some shit!”

“But I just… I wanna tell ‘im I love ‘im.”

“Fucking… Jesus, don’t you start crying! You just got promoted, _Captain_ Watson! Fucking man up already! Your boyfriend knows you love him, alright? Now go to sleep… no, don’t get up, that’s an order. Go to sleep!”

“Yessir, Major Moran, sleeping righ’ ‘way, sir.”

* * *

 

_“No, Jim-boy, I’m fine, promise! I just got off shift in the hospital and I didn’t realize it was so late. I just… wanted to hear your voice, that’s all.”_

“My God, John, a call at four in the morning! I thought you were dead or missing or blown up or-“

_“Jimmy, stop! I’m fine, I’m in one piece. Got all my fingers and toes and both ears and everything! Please stop panicking. Just… tell me about your day or something. Please. What about the network? How’s it going building your web?”_

“Ok, ok! Well, I got a couple more contacts in America, in the… usual business, I suppose. And I’ve got someone who can put me in touch with someone at Downing. Once I meet him, I’ll know exactly what strings to start pulling.”

_“Just like the spider you are!”_

“Spider? You insult me, my love. I am a Puppet Master, making them all dance for me.”

_“Of course you are, love! Listen, I have to go. Promise I’ll call you as soon as I can, and I’ll send lots of letters, alright? I love you, Jim-boy.”_

“And I love you, Johnny-boy.”

* * *

 

_Johnny,_

_I know this is going to hurt you. A lot. It hurts me too, but I have to do it._

_It’s not safe for us to be together in public anymore. My network is getting big, and I’m getting rivals. If any of these rivals knew who you are to me, they would hurt you to get to me. I can’t let that happen._

_So, I’m going underground. Completely off the radar. For the next couple of months, I’ll be erasing any evidence that I ever existed. James Richard Moriarty will be removed from all the records. It will only be a name whispered in the criminal underground._

_I know you think it isn’t safe for me, and it isn’t. Not alone. In a few days, Baz will be dishonorably discharged for conduct unbecoming an officer. He’ll be my right hand in the web. He’ll keep me safe and sane. I know you think it should be you, but I can’t take you with me. I’m sorry. It’s too dangerous._

_So forget about me. Lock me away in a box in your head. Pretend I never existed, and do the same with Baz. You need to act like your life depends on it, and your new role is a John Watson who never knew James Moriarty or Sebastian Moran. Please, do this for me, love._

_Once I’m underground, I’ll contact you again. If you decide you don’t want anything to do with me, that’s fine. I’ll leave you alone. Just remember one thing for me:_

_I love you, Johnny-boy._

_Jimmy_

* * *

 

John thought beige was a worse color than black. Black was the color of mourning, of lost love. Black was the color of depression, an emotional extreme.

Beige was the color of indifference, the color of apathy, the color of boredom. John’s bedsit was beige, the perfect place for a life on pause. His surroundings reflected how John felt. The room was empty, sparsely furnished, dull. It held no signs of life.

Neither did John Watson.

Shot in the shoulder, dismissed for a hand tremor and a psychosomatic limp. He didn’t have the tremor until they pulled him out of Afghanistan. He didn’t have the limp until they gave him his last letter from Jim. Jim, who left him behind. Jim, who he couldn’t really see anymore.

Jim, who he couldn’t marry now.

It killed John to put those dreams away now, like beloved toys a child has outgrown. Sometimes he pictured it just to get through another 30-hour shift at the base hospital. In between patients, in those sweet few seconds, he saw him and Jim in suits in front of an altar, with Baz as the best man for both of them. Just an instant of peace and love before he plunged elbow-deep into another victim of hateful war.

Gone now. Put away your toys, Johnny.

Sometimes, John escaped the lifeless bedsit by going on walks in the park. He hated the walks. All around him was the green of life, mocking his beige apathy. But he limped through anyway, each step with his left leg and each click of the cane reminding him of Jim, of what he’d lost.

But hatred was more alive than apathy.

No one ever noticed the sad, angry, bored man with a cane beyond a fleeting sense of pity. John never noticed any of them either. He just stared straight ahead, going through the motions of life without living at all.

* * *

 

“John? John Watson?” The voice was familiar, but it didn’t go with the fat, bespectacled man in front of him.

“Stamford. Mike Stamford.”

Ah, yes. From St. Bartholomew’s. Not one of the drinking guys, that was only ever Jim and Baz and him. One of the study guys. Stamford wasn’t great at parties, but he was a whiz at anatomy.

A flatshare? Maybe it was time. He’d been in the lifeless beige bedsit for too long, he needed color and life and madness again.

Stamford knew a guy, a strange one, who was looking for a flatmate. John thought this was his best option. No one normal would really be worth his time, not after Jim and Baz.

So John met this guy, this Sherlock Holmes, and the guy breezed through his life from the way John held himself and the things in his pockets. Then he breezed through the door with a wink and a farewell, and John was left with a date to see a flat and a lot of painful memories of Jim.

But John had put Jimmy in a box and locked him away, and that’s where he had to stay. This John was never Johnny-boy, never loved his childhood friend. This man had only devoted his life to medicine and to England, to the RAMC and to Queen and Country.

This John Watson was broken and empty, like a hollow bust shattered on the floor, and only a genius could put him together again.

* * *

 

Sherlock Holmes was a genius, a man with an eye for observation and a mind for facts like no one had ever seen. He saw everything, from what made you feel guilty today to what you had eaten for breakfast, in the blink of an eye, and informed you about them in a cold, factual tone. He deduced the dead body as well as the living. He memorized patterns of human behavior as well as street maps of London.

This was almost the man that John needed to fix him again. Almost.

For all Sherlock was master of the fact and the figure, he was as empty as John inside. His mind was full, but his heart was empty. He wasn’t Jim, with his manic laugh and _almost_ insanity, just waiting to jump off the edge for the next puzzle. He didn’t have Jim’s life and vitality and inspiration, creating puzzles when there were none to be found. Jim was the action, Sherlock the reaction. Jim felt everything, almost too much. Sherlock felt nothing. When the puzzles ran out, Sherlock stopped and waited. Only a reaction, never a cause.

But it was close. It was close enough that, in that whirl of observation and deduction, John felt almost alive again. It was close enough that John could lock away the box in his head, pretend his only childhood friends had never existed, because here was something that was almost a replace.

Perhaps that was how John found himself running through the halls of an empty building, trying to find Sherlock before he did something stupid, the _idiot_ , gun in hand, ready to save this genius he had just found, this genius that could save him. Perhaps that was why John shot a man, the only man he’d ever killed while out of uniform. Perhaps that was why his hand was steady and his leg strong again. Perhaps that was why John needed Sherlock in a way that no one had before.


	2. A Splash of Pink

The body was pink. Very pink.

No, not ‘the body,’ Jennifer Wilson.

Sherlock was bobbing up and down around the late Ms. Wilson, extracting information from the tiniest details. Her coat, her jewelry, even the splashes of mud on her stockings told stories to Sherlock.

All John got was that she liked pink.

Sherlock said it was murder, all four of them. Serial suicides, hard to try someone for murder when their victims only took the poison themselves, a grand puzzle!

Sally Donovan said he was a psychopath, a killer-to-be, just waiting to be bored enough. John disagreed. Sherlock was just a man on a higher level, a man who needed the puzzles to keep him going. He was just like Jim that way, but Sherlock only solved the puzzles.

Jim created them. Jim pulled the strings, and the people danced for the master, just like the puppets they all were to him.

No, John wasn’t allowed to think about Jim. He’d kept the box in his head locked so far, but if he thought about Jim, Sherlock would pick it up in an instant. John was not about to betray that his long-time boyfriend was the master of the biggest criminal network in the western world.

But it was so hard to not think about Jim, here in the face of a murder puzzle so like the ones he’d made before, with Sherlock puzzling and the police dancing like marionettes.

So John walked away from Donovan, from the crime scene, from the puppet-police and the memories of Jim.

Then came the British Government and his CCTV cameras. It was so much like the game he and Jim had played when he was on leave. John would go on walks, never telling Jim where he was going, and count the number of cameras he saw following him. It was practice for both of them; Jim getting into the CCTV networks, and John noticing surveillance. He’d come back and tell Jimmy how many he saw, but it was never all of them. He always missed a couple, high up on buildings.

John could have kicked himself for not seeing them earlier.

The man who controlled the CCTV this time had the aura of a man with a very powerful network that he had a great deal of confidence in. He was the man who ran the machine, not just a cog in the works. Government, most likely.

The man who was Britain and could be no one else, not with his public school accent and obvious breeding, was a man accustomed to getting what he wanted quickly and easily, it seemed. He was a cool, hard mask over higher order thinking and intensive planning, not the kind of person able to change quickly in the face of stiff denial. Or his jokes. The British Government clearly lacked a sense of humor.

The British Government also favored expensive three piece suits and intimidation tactics. But John had learned from the best. What John had been taught put the Army's lessons on torture to shame.

No one knows the human body like a doctor.

“You don’t seem very afraid.”

“You don’t seem very frightening.” Not after Jim’s fire and almost-madness. This man was just… ice. Cliched attempts at fear and obvious tries to pull his strings.

John wouldn’t be this man’s puppet. He was not the best there was or could be.

And the British Government was wrong. He was haunted, but not by the war. By Jim. He couldn’t live without the near-insanity and the adrenaline. It was an addiction.

He wanted his gun. The cool metal, drawing his thoughts away, into _safety_ and _protection_ and _adrenaline_ and the sharp-bitter-acrid smell of gunpowder on the night air.

* * *

 

Sherlock was worse than Jim, all his reasoning locked away inside his head. He probably was one of those children who didn’t share well. John had to pry each bit of information out of the tall genius. Too many people had told him not to show off as a child, called him a freak just like Donovan had, John guessed. It made him closed off and alone, made him keep all his fantastic observations in his head, made him unused to remembering a companion.

“Who hunts in the middle of a crowd?”

There was something just on the edge of John’s mind, something Jimmy had once said… but it was locked away in the box.

“Look, across the street. A taxi, stopped, nobody getting in, nobody getting out.”

That’s it, it had been Baz who said it, jokingly, when they were drunk: _Mate, this cabbie could be a serial killer for all I care, I just want to go to bed!_

The whole thing screamed of Jimmy’s network.

Chasing down the cab, on foot and over rooftops, John could have laughed out loud.

* * *

 

His lies were so obvious. Just popping out, John’s arse. He knew the signs. Sherlock was entranced in the puzzle, so deep he would die to find the solution.

And John was not losing another genius.

Thus, John ended up crouched below an open window, night air leeching the heat from the barrel of his gun, the sharp-bitter-acrid smell of gunpowder on the night air, adrenaline buzzing through his veins, all of it making him higher than dope or cocaine or heroin ever could.

John looked down at the text he’d gotten, just before his gun went off.

_A man marked for Death, playing with Death. A man to out-talk the talker. A man just good enough to pull the genius’s strings._

A hint, almost as puzzling as the puzzle itself.

* * *

 

“What are you so happy about?”

“Moriarty.”

_Jimmy._

“What’s Moriarty?”

“Absolutely no idea.


	3. A Stain of Black

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: This is a really short chapter, but there's not much to work with really in The Blind Banker. It's also fairly soon after he met Sherlock, so John's still coming back to humanity and life as a civilian.

After a couple weeks in 221B, John was glad he had saved Sherlock. He needed his genius. He needed the days without sleep during a case and the strops Sherlock got into when the time between puzzles had gone on too long. He needed the mess of papers and experiments and the man who wore a suit for no reason and the older brother who was Britain who played a subtle war with words whenever he came over for tea.

John needed it all.

The man at Shad Sanderson was a prick. No other way to describe it. He may have known Sherlock since Uni, but he was no old friend. A man like Sherlock needed a friend. A man like John needed a madman.

So friend and madman they would be.

John wondered if Sherlock had come to the same conclusion. He still ran off with the vaguest of explanations, but the detective never seemed surprised to turn around and find John there, off to the side and half a step behind. More than likely he had just accepted John as better than most people he dealt with and was content to let John follow him around.

* * *

 

Sometimes, the memories were too much. The things Sherlock said, his logic and reasoning, sometimes it was all too much. That’s why John got the job at the surgery. John loved being a doctor. There had always been a use for him in the Kandahar province, at school when Baz got into pub brawls, on leave dealing with Jimmy’s web. John just wanted to use his hands again. He needed the pain and the flowing blood, though it would be the same as with Jim. The sterile room at the surgery would be so similar to, and so different from, his own sterile room in the basement of Headquarters.

After all, no was knows the human body like a doctor.

Perhaps that was a good thing. He needed the distance, too. With Jim, in his web, he had been the cause, the action. At the surgery, he would be the solution, the reaction. That would fit better with his new life with Sherlock.

Dead bodies were all well and good, but John needed the living as well.

* * *

 

The mirror in the sitting room was covered over with pictures of symbols in yellow paint. A Chinese smuggling ring that used an ancient number system as a code, oh this _was_ a puzzle. A crime organization older than some European countries, the Black Lotus, masquerading as a circus company.

How many people out there had the resources to get them out of China?

John hoped it wasn’t Jim, but really, he hoped it was.

* * *

 

John thought that, if he was a really good actor, he would have seemed a little more upset when Sherlock joined them on his ‘date.’ As it was, the date was a shame to begin with. Any time he looked at Sarah, all he could hear was Jim’s voice.

_I love you, Johnny-boy._

The date was a bust before it ever began. Sarah was nice, but she was no Jim Moriarty.

Sherlock, however, was almost good enough, sneaking off backstage and getting into fights with trained Chinese warriors. Watching Sherlock fight for his life was the best escapology act he’d seen all night.

Really, the night only got better when he was kidnapped. With the gun in his face, Shan’s finger on the trigger, John felt more real, more _alive_ , than he had since Afghanistan. His veins were full of pure adrenaline, his muscles shaking. The threat of pain and torture always sent John into overdrive, whether it was to be inflicted on him or another. He could smell the blood, feel it drying on the side of his head, and it was _good_.

It was much harder than it should have been to keep the grin off his face while begging for his life. A smile would have ruined the whole show. As it was, he managed to turn his giggles into fairly realistic whimpers of fear.

“How would you describe me, John? Resourceful? Dynamic? Enigmatic?”

John nearly laughed out loud. This was _life_! Bound to a chair, a person’s life in danger from a Chinese escapology act, and Sherlock was making jokes! For the first time in weeks, John felt whole again, and he answered with a joke of his own.

“Late.”

And then the genius had to go and get strangled and John had to save Sarah’s life. Jesus, way to ruin a show.

“Don’t worry, next date won’t be like this.”

He almost felt bad for the poor woman. Good thing John had no need for a second date.

John and Sherlock never did find out who had been the mastermind who got the Black Lotus out of China and into London.

John still hoped/dreaded it was Jimmy.


	4. The Game is Afoot

Sherlock’s boredom was truly legendary. Sherlock’s boredom meant body parts in the fridge and the bitter/acrid smell of gunpowder on the air in the sitting room. Sherlock’s boredom meant not getting dressed and strops on the sofa.

An explosion turned out to be a very good way to fix all that.

* * *

 

Pip. Pip. Pip. Pip. Pip.

The phone looked the same. Sherlock thought it was another reader of John’s blog. John knew better.

It was Jimmy. It had to be. No one else had been connected to the taxi driver. No one else would have spent days and week constructing puzzles just to hand them over to Sherlock. No one else was a creator like Jim was.

He wasn’t really worried about Sherlock possibly being hurt. John was near him, Jim had to know that. Jim would never hurt him.

John wondered when Jimmy would contact him again. It had been several months since he got the letter in the hospital.

The thought was barely through his mind when the door to the lab opened.

“Jim!”

_Jimmy. I love you, Jim-boy._

John had never had a greater test of his acting skills. There was his love, his Jim, acting like some schmuck from the IT department and Molly’s boyfriend, not even looking his way.

Molly would never know how close she came to a violent death at John’s hand that day.

“Gay.”

Even Jim’s acting couldn’t hide that from Sherlock. On the other hand, he had been after Sherlock’s attention. The signs and cues between them were far too subtle for John. He was an ordinary man between mad geniuses.

“It was nice to meet you.”

“You too.”

The quick glimpse Jim gave him nearly broke his heart.

“No, Sherlock, that wasn’t kind.”

John had to fight the grin off his face. Good show, Sherlock, chasing Molly away from his Jim. He could have hugged the consulting detective.

“Carl Powers.”

John remembered that swim meet. Jimmy was a swimmer, and they’d all three met Carl Powers. He was a bully who liked to pick on Jim because he was small and quiet around others and had a boyfriend and not Carl Powers. After a run-in with the much larger Baz and very protective John, Powers had only picked on Jimmy in the locker rooms. John had never asked if Jim had had anything to do with Powers’ death. He’d never needed to ask. He knew already. Even in school, Jim had a network.

What else would you expect from someone who had always wanted to be a criminal mastermind and evil genius growing up?

“I can’t be the only one who gets bored.”

How right you are, Sherlock, how right you are.

* * *

 

Pip. Pip. Pip. Pip.

Oh, Jimmy, Jimmy, in the business of relocation now? And such a sense of humor, too! Janus, the Roman god with two faces. Janus Cars, the business with two sides.

“Why does anyone do anything?”

Oh, Jimmy, just how bored are you, love?

Sherlock was more excited than John had ever seen him. He and Jim really were made to play the game together. Jim, the puzzle, the creator, the puppeteer. Sherlock, the solution, the reactor, the reluctant marionette.

Everyone else was game pieces.

* * *

 

Pip. Pip. Pip.

“What’s he doing? Working his way around the world? Showing off?”

John didn’t know Jim had his thumb in so many pies, but yes, he was showing off.

“It wasn’t the cat.”

Now see, this is why Johnny wasn’t a puzzler. He had played his part in enough of them while with Jim, behind the scenes as the medical expert. Once as a sharpshooter. Never in the open, never the man player. That role wasn’t meant for him.

“Don’t you see? We’re one up on him!”

Oh Sherlock. You’ll never be one up on Jim.

* * *

 

Pip. Pip.

“Not much cop, this caring lark.”

That was what made you so different, Sherlock. No web, no friends, no feelings. Just… you.

“Have you ever heard of the Golem?”

That struck a chord in John. The Golem was a horror story from a book he’d had as a child. It was little Johnny’s favorite story, one he told in the dark at many a sleepover around the fireplace with Jimmy and Baz.

Now, in the planetarium, Johnny’s little horror story was coming true.

Was this Jim’s way of getting in contact with him?

“Oh, God, it’s a _kid_!”

Oh, Jim, why? A child? John hated when children got involved with the web.

“Just whispers.”

_It will only be a name whispered in the criminal underground._

* * *

 

The further he went into these cases, the more he thought about Jim. His locked box was in danger of shattering altogether.

Really, why Sherlock and Mycroft, he who was Britain, even bothered to keep of the charade of John solving cases on his own, he would never know. Sherlock was only one to solve them anyway.

Sarah had invited him for tea. She was still just an aspect of John’s cover, but at least she was a pleasant one.

It was a shame he never made it for tea that night.

The taxi he hailed had stopped halfway to Sarah’s and picked up another bloke, tall and bundled up against the cold.

“The pool,” the new occupant grunted out.

Before John could voice his complaint, the tall bloke turned to him. Blue eyes met familiar green, lit with a mischievous gleam.

“Baz?”


	5. Tested at Gunpoint

“Johnny!” John found himself wrapped in a hug from his oldest friend. He locked his arms around the large man and squeezed back as hard as he could.

“God, Baz, I missed you! I haven’t heard anything since your discharge! But… I guess that was the point, wasn’t it?”

Baz looked ashamed, unable to meet John’s eye.

“Yeah. I told Jimmy you wouldn’t like it, that he should take you with him, too. I mean, you’re a doctor and sharpshooter. Fuck, you scored better with a handgun than I did!” John grinned at the memory. Baz had called him Doctor Death for weeks after their scores came back. “I’m just a sniper, you can get one of us anywhere for a decent price, but you? Shit, man, what you did in that basement was pure art. I told him he was mad to try to separate you two. All the years you’ve been together? Poor bastard hasn’t been right since.”

A thought occurred to John.

“I’m the fifth pip, aren’t I? This is Jimmy’s twisted way of getting in touch with me again like he promised, isn’t it?”

Baz looked at him curiously, seeming to finally notice the lines on John’s face and the bags under his eyes.

“Shit, he did a number on you, too, didn’t he? Jesus, I told him that was the worst idea he’d ever had.” He sighed. “Yeah, you’re the fifth puzzle. Well, part of it. You’re gonna be the stolen voice this time. Your detective’s already set a meeting for midnight at the pool. Jim’s got me being the sniper with the sight on you. He won’t trust anyone else, and he’d never hurt you, you know? It’s just another show.”

“Am I gonna see him, Baz?” John asked softly. None of the other hostages had seen Jim, they were just his voices. Baz smiled.

“Of course! Seeing you again was one of the reasons he put this whole show on! He’s just been showing of, you know? Bragging to the police and the Holmes brothers, playing with them. He’s been showing you how good his is now, how big his web is. He’s like a kid like that, you know?”

“Yeah,” John smiled, “I know.”

At the pool, Baz led him to the boy’s locker room. There, looking strong and untouchable in an impeccable suit, was the man of the hour. A tiny smile graced his lips when he saw John.

“Johnny,” he breathed out quietly. Jim looked so unsure of himself in that moment, a way he had never looked before.

  _If you decide you don’t want anything to do with me, that’s fine. I’ll leave you alone._

John wanted everything to do with Jim. He never wanted to be alone again.

“I love you, Jim-boy.”

Jim all but ran to him, pulling him into a heated, desperate kiss.

“And I love you, Johnny-boy,” he whispered in John’s ear when they broke apart. Baz coughed.

“I’ll, uh… leave you to… uh, I’ll just go get set up then, shall I?” he managed to choke out before fleeing. Neither of the two noticed, foreheads pressed together, breathing each other in.

“Why?” John asked.

“I thought I had to.” John pulled back to look the dark-haired man in the eye. “Really, I did, John. I thought it would protect you better that way. I have rivals in the underground, and most of the first-world governments are after me, too. If any of them knew about you or what you mean to me, they wouldn’t hesitate to use you against me. How could I live with myself in you were killed or captured or tortured and I knew it was because of me?” Jim’s voice was pleading, his eyes sad. His arguments were good. They made a lot of sense, and John couldn’t fault them, but none of that fixed the emptiness and betrayal he’d felt since he was shot, back in the Kandahar province of Afghanistan. He needed Jim to know what it had been like for him, living in that beige bedsit of apathy and lifelessness. Just the memory of it caused pain to him now.

“I was going to marry you.” It was a simple truth, the only thing John could say now. The only thing he could tell Jim.

Jim stepped back, hands clasped before him, a look of utter shock on his face.

“What?” he mouthed, unable to get the sound through his throat. John just shrugged and repeated himself.

“I was going to marry you. I was gonna ask you when I got back from my last tour, before…” he looked away. “Then I got shot and I got your letter and it all went to shit so fast. I almost couldn’t handle it. If you hadn’t told me that you would find me again…” John swallowed hard, “well.” Jim took his John’s face in his hands, making him look back at his love.

“I am so, so sorry, Johnny. I made a mistake. I should have taken you with me. I was wrong.” He kissed him once, lightly. “I love you.”

John reached into his shirt and fished out his tags. On the chain were his ID circles and two plain gold rings, one white and one yellow.

“I had rings made up and everything. I was all ready to get down on one knee and ask you right there in the airport.” John blushed. “They’re inscribed. I… I figured you wouldn’t mind what’s on there.”

Jim took the chain and slid the rings off. He looked at the larger one, made of yellow gold, first.

“‘I love you, Johnny-boy,’“ he read. That was meant to be John’s ring. He held his ring, the white gold band, in shaking fingers to read the inscription.

‘And I love you, Jim-boy’

Tears rolled down his face as he looked back at John.

“Let’s get married,” he whispered. “Right here, right now. A secret wedding for a secret marriage, it’s perfect.”

So, they said their vows and put on their rings, and the Watson-Mortiarys shared their first kiss together.

They sat together on a bench, holding hands and talking and occasionally kissing, until it was time to begin the show again.

Jim helped his new husband into the false bomb and the earpiece, promising that no one would hurt him, and he would never leave again. When midnight struck, they both heard Sherlock enter the building, and they shared one last look.

“The game is afoot, Johnny. Let’s go put on a show.”

* * *

 

“All your little puzzles, making me dance, all to distract me from this.”

Oh, Sherlock, not quite.

_“Go time.”_

John shoved his hands in his pockets and stepped through the door. He kept his eyes firmly on Sherlock, not glancing up to give away Baz’s position.

“Evening. This is a turn-up, isn’t it Sherlock?”

John can see it in his eyes, the great detective, so much higher than mere mortals, is absolutely convinced he’s been taken in. He has, but that doesn’t mean John is Moriarty. Just his husband.

“John,” the sound is no more than whisper, but it screams betrayal as it echoes through the empty room. “What the hell…?”

“Bet you never saw this coming.”

Jimmy’s voice has a smile in it. This is a fantastic little game for him.

_Oh, it’s Christmas!_

_“What would you like me to make him say next?”_ Jim’s just having a blast, Johnny can hear it through the earpiece. “ _Now show him the bomb, Johnny. Watch him panic from Baz’s sight. Don’t smile, you’ll ruin the fun!”_

“Grottle o’gear. Grottle o’gear. Grottle o’gear.” Really, Jim? John wants to laugh and roll his eyes and scold his new husband all at once, but he can’t. He’s in the middle of a performance.

He’s on stage right now.

“I can stop John Watson, too. Stop his heart.” John thought that was a bit cheesy and melodramatic, but they were in an empty pool at midnight, centered in snipers’ crosshair. Fit the mood a bit, didn’t it?

“I gave you my number. I thought you might call.”

John nearly cracks a rib from holding his laughter in. He really should be in movies.

And just where the fuck did Sherlock get off messing about with his gun?

“Dear Jim, please will you fix it for me…”

All the notes they’d ever passed in school, back when they were young and newly together and made of hormones and libido and not a whole lot else, flash in front of John’s eyes.

_Dear Jimmy, please will you fix it for me? I can’t seem to get you out of my mind. I keep imagining you against a wall, gasping my name. Meet me at lunch and show me the real thing?_

John shakes his head a little. Don’t push it, Jimmy. He doesn’t feel like you do, he doesn’t know what you and I know, Jimmy.

“People have died.”

“That’s what people DO!”

John remembered saying something very similar, after one of his tours in Kandahar. He’d been captured by one of the terrorist cells (Sherlock had been right, the origin of his leg injury had been traumatic, but Jim's _lessons_ had never been more appreciated) and the Army sent Jim a letter saying he was MIA. The crime rate in London had tripled in the two weeks before John was found.

_Don’t you EVER die on me, Johnny._

_I can’t promise that, Jim. That’s what people do._

“Oh, GOOD! Very good!” A hidden complement. Jim was impressed by his acting, then. They were so close now, if he just leaned in he could kiss him, just like they had done so many times before.

“Your sniper pulls that trigger, Mr. Moriarty, then we both go up.” Baz would do no such thing. John was his oldest friend. He would kill everyone in that room, Jim included, to keep Johnny safe, and he’d do it without a second thought.

“Isn’t he sweet?” Oh, Jimmy, you dog. “And so touchingly loyal.” For you, anything.

“I have been reliably informed that I don’t have one.”

“But we both know that’s not quite true.”

Indeed. John had found it. It was buried deep, but it showed through in the pain in Sherlock’s eyes when Donovan called him “Freak,” in laughing at crime scenes, in waiting for John at the bottom of the stairs. The self-proclaimed sociopath was just that.

Self-proclaimed.

“But then, of course, you wouldn’t be able to cherish it for very long.” So true. John would rip him apart if Sherlock killed Jim. The consulting detective would beg for death long before John felt kind enough to give it to him.

After all, no one knows the human body like a doctor.

When the door shut behind Jimmy, cutting off his last sing-songy taunt, Sherlock immediately rushed to John. The man just wouldn’t believe that John was fine, he was only breathless from hold in his laughter. His face hurt from the effort not to smile.

John was glad he managed to keep the gloves on. A brand-new wedding ring would have been hard to explain right then.

A friendly little red dot, courtesy of Baz, told John the show was not over yet.

Sherlock had the gun wavering between the false bomb and Jim. Three choices: don't shoot and try to talk his way out, shot Jim and die painfully, or shoot the false bomb and have their little plays exposed for smoke and mirrors. 

Jimmy had a smile on his face.

And John was left wondering which path the bullet would take.


End file.
